Monday, January 24, 2011

This article talks about the tax going up 66 % in Illinois. It was 3 % then went to 5 %. So it went up 2 %. 2 % divided by 3 % is 67 % but they didn’t round up they rounded down.

One of the top news stories on the internet this week was about state income taxes going up 66% in Illinois. I decided to read this article because it had math in it, and I thought it might be a good article for the blog. The lawmakers in Illinois voted to increase the income tax from 3% to 5%. It went up 2%; a 2% increase on a tax of 3% is approximately 67% if you divide 2% by 3%. But in the article they rounded down when they should have rounded up.

Friday, November 5, 2010

"I chose this because when i was still in Colombia the earthquake was the new of the month.

Because of the devastation of the earthquake they have now a cholera epidemic. After all the dead they have again many interesting numbers. first they give us a number. in the beginning there was 1,978 people hospitalize and the number increase to 1,6742 . second the statistic for people getting sick increase 41% and the dead toll has increase 31%."

Hannah went to the movies and found the following real-life application:

The first picture is prices for tickets, the second is for popcorn prices.Ifapeople buy tickets for a 3-D matinee showing of a movie they pay $12.50 each. If people buyblarge bags of popcorn they pay $8.00 for each. An equation for if some people got popcorn and a 3-D matinee would be 12.50a+ 8b= total price.

I don't love writing papers, so when I found out that I would have to write a ten page paper for my history of math class I was less than excited. The only way to make the project more palatable was to write about something that I enjoy and want to learn even more about, which is why I chose the visual artist M.C. Escher. I was aware of his use of tessellations to create amazing images, but that was the extent of my knowledge.

While writing my paper I learned that M.C. Escher's work was a lot more complex than I had ever imagined. He used concepts such as infinity, the mobius strip, the Penrose Triangle, impossible objects, hyperbolic geometry and inversion of a circle to create pieces of art that were so much more complex than his initial division of a plane works. It gave me a knew appreciation for his visual art, but I still don't like writing papers!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that consists of three phrases. The first phrase contains five syllables, the second phrase contains seven syllables, and the third contains five syllables. That makes a total of seventeen syllables. The phrases do not have to rhyme.

I wrote my first haiku and it goes like this:

My name is Miles. I like to solve math problems.
I am a good boy.

Not bad if I do say so myself.

Have you ever written a haiku? If so, send it to me and I will post it.